The Paradox of Creative Diversity vs. Creative Volume

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Creative diversity can't be measured.

Creative volume can.

That's the problem.

People opt for what can be measured because it fits most management systems like EOS, OKRs, or traditional KPIs.

When your CMO is wondering what's happening with performance, saying "we want creative diversity" isn't a measurable number for them. They can’t then go report to the CEO, “Our plan right now is to focus on diversity of creative.”

But saying "we make 5 ads a week" is easy to understand.

It also feels like progress.

The CEO and CMO will see ads going out the door every week and month.

But diversity of creative? Much harder to track and show. In turn, there is no incentive to have creative diversity.

Time to create is not made equal

Let's set the numbers aside and look at the time investment:

If you're making 5 static ads that feel similar, you'll get them done fast. But if you want to make 5 static ads all uniquely different, it will take significantly more time to write and design the same number of ads.

So on paper, 5 ads were created either way. But their impact will be dramatically different.

Anyone who says you can get 5 unique static ads in the same timeframe as 5 similar ones has never created an ad before.

The trap of volume-based measurement

Because you need to hit a volume number, your incentive is to hit that number at whatever cost—and usually that cost is speed.

Over time, your account will start to look the same, and you'll struggle to scale new ads. The second-order effects of this volume measurement are coming into play.

If you want diversity, you need to do something different in your process, which won't happen in your factory of efficient ad creation. In fact, you might need to go slower and not hit the volume numbers to get the new concepts that can help scale your account.

This takes courage. You have to go to the CMO and say, "I know you want numbers, but we need something different which will require us to move slower and rethink how we communicate."

That's hard to do when performance is flat or declining. That's when panic sets in and the CMO starts yelling, "Slow? No, we need MORE content! Surely one of those will be a winner if we just do more."

The hidden cost of creative sameness

I see this all the time in sales calls with prospective clients. They come to me with a Facebook account full of ads that look virtually identical. Same layout. Same messaging. Same hooks. Just small variations in images or headline phrasing.

The data tells the story: initial performance might be decent, but over time, costs rise while conversion rates drop. Audiences become blind to the ads. The algorithm struggles to find new pockets of customers because it's serving essentially the same message.

Then comes the blame game: "The platform isn't working anymore." "CPMs are just higher now." "Our audience is tapped out."

But the real problem? Creative fatigue from a lack of diversity.

When you show Facebook 50 variations of the same basic ad concept, you're not giving the algorithm what it needs to find you different types of customers. You're just fishing in the same small pond with slightly different bait.

The cost of efficiency over effectiveness

Here's what happens in most organizations:

1. Marketing sets up a content calendar with aggressive output goals

2. Creative teams optimize for production speed

3. Templates get created to hit deadlines

4. Visual and messaging patterns become rigid

5. Everyone celebrates hitting their KPIs

6. But performance slowly declines

Nobody gets fired for making the expected number of ads. But they might get fired when those ads stop working.

The irony is that by optimizing for what's easy to measure (volume), we often sacrifice what actually matters (effectiveness).

The long-term cost of unmeasured creativity

The lack of measurement for creative diversity can be the thing that hurts you in the long run.

There is a certain amount of speed and volume that you need across different spend levels. At the same time, you need to make sure you have time allocated for new ideation and trying new ways to communicate your product.

Few teams do this well. Most don't bake risk-taking into their schedule.

We need more risk-taking and fewer quantifiable goals.

A better approach: Balanced creative portfolios

What if instead of asking "How many ads did we make this week?" we asked:

"How many fundamentally different value propositions did we test?" "How many unique visual approaches did we try?" "How many different customer pain points did we address?" "How many new hooks did we develop?"

This requires a mindset shift. It means accepting that three truly different ad concepts might deliver more value than twenty variations of the same idea.

It means building time for exploration into your process. It means giving your creative team permission to fail on some concepts because that's the only way to discover breakthrough winners.

Most importantly, it means having the courage to tell your CMO: "We're going to make fewer ads so we can make better ads."

What if the key to performance isn't the number of ads you make, but how different each one is from the last?

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you want me to address anything in the future for you. Just reply and I can write about it.

Make sure to check out the podcast.

Until then, keep creating!

Matthew Gattozzi

PS. My team has some openings and I want to work with you. If you need creative that scales, reach out to me here.

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